Page 9 of Man of His Dreams

“Hey,” Tony added, almost as an afterthought, “I never asked your name.”

“Flip Devin. No houses named after me, as far as I know.”

“See you Thursday, Flip Devin.”

He wrote more words that evening and sketchily plotted out the next several scenes. His suitcase, he learned, was now in Houston. If he could bring himself to believe the airline rep, it was due to arrive in New Orleans first thing in the morning.

When it was fairly late, he took a stroll down Bourbon Street, where drunken, noisy crowds still swarmed, and the music and bright lights swirled around him like a fever dream. Sometimes he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a woman dressed in a long gown or a man in a stovepipe hat, but they always disappeared when he turned his head to look. The odors of booze, perfume, tobacco and marijuana smoke, and frying food filled his nose. He remembered watching Dumbo when he was a little kid, intrigued but also frightened by the scene in which the little elephant gets drunk and hallucinates. Now he was Dumbo, despite being sober.

He fell asleep shortly after returning home, and he didn’t dream.

In the morning, an airline rep very earnestly told him that his luggage piece was on the way to New Orleans, while the AirTag said it was back in Oakland. “Can I at least get frequent flyer miles for all the travel my suitcase has done?” he asked the rep. She wasn’t amused.

Guided by his phone, he walked a couple of miles to a vintage clothing shop. It had higher prices than a thrift store, but he found a couple of shirts he liked, including a collared sweater with an orange-and-brown geometric design. The sweater, he thought, would be perfect for tomorrow’s date with Tony. If it was a date. It might be just a friendly local showing a newcomer around. And the sweater would be fine for that as well.

Afterward he gathered more groceries and returned home to write. It was warm today—and far muggier than California—and although he initially produced a lot of words, torpor eventually settled in. He stripped out of his sweaty clothes and lay spread-eagled on the bed, thankful for the ceiling fan. For some reason it was easier to believe in ghosts, fortunetelling, and the third eye when heat clung to the skin and made the air feel thick and blurry.

Miss Amelie was across the street when, freshly showered, he ventured out for dinner. “Told you,” she called. “Open up that Clear Eye and the writing flows nice and easy. Never mind the heat. You’ll get used to it.”

Could she see him at his desk, typing away? He didn’t think the angle was right for that. Maybe she lived in an apartment across the way and could spy on him from there.

Flip strolled over to her. “How long have you lived around here?”

She frowned in thought. “In the Quarter? Moved here after Katrina. But I’ve lived in the city my whole life.”

“I can’t imagine that. I’ve never lived anywhere for more than a few years.”

“You ain’t found the right garden to put down your roots. Don’t mean you won’t. But some folks don’t get planted until they die.” She gave a raspy laugh.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He used to think that he was content being a tumbleweed, to use her plant analogy. He’d thought it meant freedom. Lately, though, he was maybe feeling untethered in a more negative way. Unconnected to anywhere—or to anyone.

Miss Amelie shuffled a deck of cards but didn’t deal any of them out. “You think you came here because you had fun on vacation in this city once, and ’cause it ain’t cold here in March, and ’cause you figure it’s a good city for authors. But maybe you came here ’cause you’re s’posed to be here.” She leaned back in the chair, her expression implying she’d said something significant.

Flip felt slightly stunned. Her analysis of his reasons was spot-on. But he didn’t agree with her last sentence. “Are you talking about fate? I don’t believe in fate.”

She harrumphed and slammed down the deck of cards. “Don’t believe in ghosts, don’t believe in fate. What do you believe in, boy? Anyhow, that ain’t what I meant. Sometimes a person just fits into a particular place like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Could be ’cause they got ties there, or could be they’re just the right shape. Now, get along and find yourself dinner. Turn left when you get to Decatur and go up a block to the place with the duck quesadillas. That’s what you’re in the mood for. And hurry yourself or you’re gonna get caught in the rain.”

He’d never even heard of a duck quesadilla, but now that she’d mentioned it, well, it sounded pretty tasty. His stomach growled. “See you later, Miss Amelie.”

She was staring down at her phone and didn’t look up. “Tell that old player that I wouldn’t mind if he came around again. Ain’t seen him for a long time.”

Flip decided it was best not to ask what she meant by this—and even better not to think about it at all. He shook his head and headed for Decatur.

The restaurant wasn’t anything fancy, but the quesadillas hit the spot perfectly. Flip sat at the bar to eat, enjoying the noisy buzz of conversations and the bustle of activity, even when people bumped into him in passing. He was just considering whether he might still be hungry enough for red beans and rice when there was a loud crash. Momentarily startled, he recovered and identified it as a thunderclap. Miss Amelie had said that rain was on the way, but of course nobody needed supernatural talents to foresee the weather. They could just use a phone app.

Flip decided to forgo the extra food, and by the time he stepped onto the sidewalk, several more thunderclaps had resounded and large drops were starting to pelt the pavement. He took off for home at a fast clip, grateful he had only a few blocks to travel. Rain started sheeting down in earnest before he turned the corner onto St. Philip, leaving him soaked to the skin. Water flowed down the streets as if they were rivers, carrying wrappers and other bits of debris. He thought he saw a crowd of people hurrying northwest, away from the river, but that must have been some odd trick of the downpour and poor light, because when he squinted he saw that the street was empty.

Just outside the door to his building, a mangled umbrella lay on the pavement like a dead prehistoric bird. It was the kind with a handle you could hook over your arm when it wasn’t raining. Without really thinking about it, he picked the thing up and closed it as best he could—which wasn’t very well—and carried it inside. He stood for a moment in the building’s small vestibule, dripping and staring bemusedly at the broken umbrella.

And damned if he didn’t carry the umbrella upstairs to his apartment and set it in the corner of the kitchen, as if it might possibly be useful for something. He didn’t feel quite right in the head. Not insane, but… muddled. It was as if he had a high fever, except he didn’t feel sick at all. Or maybe it was like being drunk or high. No, that wasn’t it. He felt as if he were in a dream. Hell, his actual dreams—the ones with Scratch—had felt more real than he did now.

Dazed, he wandered out onto the gallery, where the rain fell so hard that he could barely breathe, where he was blind to everything but the bolts of lightning and the thunder that reverberated through his body like an alien heartbeat. He heard a piano playing something lively, and a crowd laughing. He tasted cigarettes and bourbon.

When he came inside, he closed the windows but not the curtains, stripped off every stitch of clothing, and sat down to write.

Chapter

Five

---